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Paul Graham
Paul Graham
Lisp Programmer/Advocate, Author of Hackers and Painters
Sourced
- At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.
- Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems.
- Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one.
- The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.
- Google never did any advertising. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.
- As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.
- The terms "cutting-edge" and "accounting" do not sound good together.
- Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.
- I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.
- It's hard to say exactly what constitutes research in the computer world, but as a first approximation, it's software that doesn't have users.
- ... VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.
- Your teachers are always telling you [high school students] to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults.... Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time.
- College is where faking stops working.
- The hard part about figuring out what customers want is figuring out that you need to figure it out.
- A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.
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